Should Being a Single Mother Be Considered a Red Flag in Dating?

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99 .9, you know times out of a hundred that's not even like these are like what we're talking about is people who've willingly chosen this path that's contrary to God's plan and they're reaping all the bitter consequences of it and so there has to be some way for people you know to look at on the outside and say hey maybe we should just all do what

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God says you know. Warning the following message may be offensive to some audiences these audiences may include but are not limited to professing

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Christians who never read their Bible sissies sodomites men with man buns those who approve of men with man buns man bun enablers white knights for men with man buns homemakers who have finished

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Netflix but don't know how to meal plan and people who refer to their pets as fur babies mere discretion is advised people are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio in Christ alone hope of salvation any hope of heaven the issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty

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God is hanging over our head they will hear his words they will not act upon them and when the floods of divine judgment when the fires of wrath come they will be consumed and they will perish

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God wrapped himself in flesh condescended and became a man died on the cross for sin was resurrected on the third day has ascended to the right hand of the father where he sits now to make intercession for us

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Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words they will act upon them and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day their house will stand welcome to Bible bash where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask we're your host

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Harrison Kerrigan pastor Tim Mullett and today we'll answer the age -old question is being a single mother a red flag and Tim as we kick off this conversation what

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Bible verse do you have for us yeah Genesis 2 24 says therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh okay so what is that verse saying how does that apply to this conversation

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I mean this is basically the foundation for marriage in the

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Old Testament but I mean it basically if you want to think about the most commonly quoted

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Bible verse in the New Testament and in the Old Testament even about this topic it's this so basically as the

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New Testament writers are looking back to the Old Testament and looking at God's perspective of marriage it's all basically built on this foundation a man shall leave his father mother hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh so that's what marriage is one man one woman becoming one flesh you know forever that's the point yeah so then you know when you're thinking about a topic like single motherhood or something what you're doing what you're talking about from the very beginning is something that was not the design okay yeah like you know however that came about like that has come about as a result of sin in like sin in some sense okay like meaning like even in the best case scenario where like man dies and you have a single mother that only happened because Adam and Eve ate of fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that's a consequence of sin right like right penalty for sin is death so that's not the primary design of the human race like the primary design of the human race is one man one woman for life like that's the that's the issue right and so then when you're living in a world that's been influenced by sin then a lot of you know things happen you know some some of which are innocent like that but then at the same time hearkening back to the rebellion of our first parents which you know we're part of so there's like there's that and then you know a lot of it a lot of this is you know woman woman uh as a single parent did that happen from fornication you know does that happen from divorce you know if it happened from divorce there had to be some sort of sinful party in the divorce there's no such thing as like a you know two innocent parties in the divorce or something like that yeah you know so like this is just uh this is a situation that comes about in a fallen world um that is not you know the primary plan and so then in the way that god has made the world god's made the world in such a way that like there's just consequences to these things you know that are deep and profound and so yeah yeah he's structured the world in such a way that not only is like his revealed will that a man and woman should be joined together in marriage in permanent like in permanent marriage forever like that that's the plan but then he's just he's constructed the world in such a way that deviations from the that plan from whatever way they come about are always going to be filled with challenges like in so many different ways right so i mean even in the case where you have like the godly woman married to the godly man right when the godly man dies and then she's left right with a child or something like that even in that kind of situation you're still marrying a woman who is going to miss her husband and you know in the best case scenario has you know already experienced certain things about marriage that you haven't right and then has like there are certain entailments to that like meaning you know you're going into a marriage with um there's there's obviously baggage there you know there's no way to word it in i mean you can you can you can get offended by that way of wording it but there's obviously baggage of some sort okay uh so yeah that's i mean so obviously it's just the it's just god didn't um like god's design for the world in the first instance was like he created a good creation and if sin hadn't entered into the picture you know obviously i mean this is like a like one of those hypotheticals that he obviously had like his plan was to create the human race and allow them to fall and then to bring a redeemer into christ so there's that but i mean like the the idea of single motherhood is you know contrary to that you know stated intention for humanity in the first instance for sure well and it seems to like whenever you have this kind of conversation it seems like there's two you know things are divided pretty evenly amongst most men and most most women where most men are looking are looking at a question like that hey is is being a single mother you know you're in you're in you're a single guy you're interested in a girl you find out that she's a single mother right and it seems like most men at least most you know reformed christian men look at that scenario and they say yeah obviously that's a red flag i mean yeah i mean sure like you said there might be a there might be an explanation for it but it's a red flag right off the bat and and that's just obvious there's no debate about you know like hey if i've got two two women who are both equally godly you know equally uh polite and nice and whatever whatever else um that you're looking for in a wife and then one one was previously married has a child the other has never been married i mean come on like that's that's obvious and then and then at the same time you have women who are looking at that same scenario and they're saying no you can't say that's a red flag you know and so it seems so it seems like it's pretty divided evenly divided um with with exceptions along you know like male and males think one thing females think the exact opposite thing so but but what were you going to say as i was talking about part of that is people don't understand what the word red flag means in this country yeah i i think you're right i think you're right so yeah i've asked these questions along these lines and you know routinely i'm greeted with the reality that people don't know what this word means yeah good yeah red flag meaning hey the obviously not this is this is inherently um you know like an issue a deal breaker yeah like it's a it's inherently a deal breaker a red flag is just something that you look at and you say hey i need to ask more questions about that because it could be a deal breaker sure sure yeah and that's that's just the obvious meaning of the word but then i think one of the things that you know you find when you interact with people on a regular basis is that a lot of people they don't really even know what the words are using yeah so this is one of those examples where if you say hey is it a red flag they hear is there's a a substantial minority of people who hear deal breaker right when that's not really what this phrase means in this context at all okay so like a red flag means like you know hold on shine a spotlight on this do extra due diligence and see what you're finding out here you know that kind of thing not a deal breaker no matter what but then yeah so i mean i think obviously um i guess you can there a lot of ladies i think one of the things that's happened is that a lot of ladies are reacting to this uh in a way that's different from the men in the fact that a lot of it's the result of the fact that they bear a lot more of the um burden like the the uh consequences of fornication essentially you know so like a man can fornicate and get a girl pregnant and then absolve himself of all responsibility of what happens at that point and get away with it you know and in like in in that kind of scenario you know there's not a there's not always like an effective legal means of holding his feet to the fire and or even a social means of doing that and you know particularly if she's sleeping around with a bunch of people you know she may not even know who it is right right and that kind of thing and so then what you have is you have a bunch of men who are using that one woman and she's left with the result of it all right but then she's happy to be like she's involved in it she and this is part of what we deny right we deny that the lady has any culpability in any of this and any responsibility in any of this but then like if you think about like well what actually happens is she starts she's pregnant she's unmarried she bears all the stigma of that still and there is you know despite juno and there is still like stigma that's associated with single motherhood right so what happens is like the lady is going to bear all that shame and guilt and we're pretending like it doesn't exist and so then what actually happens is you have ladies who are just like full like they don't even know what they're doing like they don't know like they're they're so intent upon trying to protect the woman in this kind of scenario that they don't realize that like the end result of this project that you're embarking upon is just to de -stigmatize like single motherhood like de -stigmatize fornication like that's not a good thing for society to de -stigmatize fornication like we don't want to do that do we right so like in the effort of like so in the in the you know the best case scenario you have like the christian girls who were promiscuous in their past and maybe even had had a child out of wedlock or something like that now jesus has redeemed them and there's no therefore no condemnation then they're taking that as like this like moral mandate to remove all the stigma and shame associated with fornication and you know untimely pregnancies you know that kind of stuff and it's like well that's that's not actually good for anyone you know so so but then in the first instance yes a lady is going to bear more of that by virtue of the fact that she's stuck with the result right which is i mean part of why like pregnant like this is why like fornication is riskier for women than men like it really is yeah like they're not like not only is it riskier like in terms of they're going to bear all the consequences of it like biologically i mean like emotionally it messes with them way more like way more than it like it typically messes with a man too right so like they attach like they're made to attach to um men like that's what they're i mean that's that's what they're made to do i mean i saw some ridiculous thing on twitter um about like a like a guy finding out that it was his wife's desire she's about to die and her desire was to sleep with her ex one last time before like her husband is finding this out that her desire is to sleep with her ex one last time before she dies or something it's like why does that happen you know you know like it's and that's not like uh you look at that and it's it's it's not like hey that's a crazy woman or something like you can say that but it's like that's because women are made to attach to men okay yeah and it's harder for them to take it back you know so like it's it really is an awkward funeral yeah i mean it's ridiculous if the ex comes see the thing is it's like if you if you don't understand that there are differences between men and women along those lines then you just look at that and you say hey women are stupid or something like that it's like no they're actually made to attach to men like they are you know they have they emotionally attached to men like and then the more that men they emotionally attached with the less they have to give to the last dude you know in the list so like that's the way it works so like now you think about this though like what i'm trying to say is they bear all that like they they they bear all the consequences of the fornication and then the guys get off scot -free and then they look at the guys and they're like hey yeah well you know i didn't get here from no one from nothing right there is a guy involved in this too can we please acknowledge there's a guy involved in this too and maybe a bunch of guys involved in this too and maybe i'm just a product of a bunch of being used by a bunch of men and yeah all that's actually true sure yeah sure all that's true but then you can't if there was some sort of guy who came along and preserved himself from all that then it's not as if you can like say hey um you better just kind of accept me for you know like you you then come you take on all this stuff like all this baggage i have this emotional baggage this like the consequences of all this stuff you take it all on right and now you're going to marry me and you know maybe the other guy has child visiting rights and all that and you do that because men in general pigs is like well that is that isn't necessarily the way this works okay so like that isn't necessarily reasonable but then i think what ends up happening though is that yeah i mean there's also like the reality that yeah i mean most men are looking at porn addicted to porn and so then if you have a bunch of men who are addicted to porn and then looking at the lady who you know got pregnant and saying hey you know harlot you know scarlet letter whatever you know like uh jezebel jezebel you know whatever like if that's what you're doing it's like hey isn't that pretty hypocritical and it's like all that's all that's true all that's true but at the same time is there some ability to say hey yes all that's true but then the best in the best case scenario you have two people who saved it saved themselves for each other for marriage and that's the best that's the best situation you know isn't that the isn't that a lot better we don't have to deal with any of this right and so and then do is it okay to like acknowledge that there are things to do yeah yeah yeah i i get what you're saying you know and i think because there are a lot of women even even women who you know we interact with online who i see sort of making they're making these arguments that are essentially hey you've got to accept the woman for who she is she's not less valuable uh just because she has a child now or she's you know she's she's um unmarried with a child she she's not a virgin whatever and you know i i want to try to give them some benefit of the doubt in the sense that i'm sure there are plenty of you know reprobate men out there who are the they are like the addicted to porn kind of guy they are they are the guy who's had just as much you know intercourse himself with women right and and um but then they're they're being hypocritical about it and they're they're probably they're probably not extending as much grace and mercy to the women they're talking about as they expect to be shown to them i'm sure i'm sure that probably happens but then the yeah at the end of the day the reality is it's like you're saying hey best best case scenario you know the best case scenario is like okay you've got a man who didn't save himself uh for marriage and you have a woman who didn't save herself for marriage and now she has a she has a child out of wedlock and you know the woman's looking at this man and thinking you need to you need to view me as no less valuable than the than the uh you know the woman who did save herself or i think you know or who did who didn't either but at least didn't get pregnant you know didn't get pregnant yeah and it's like hey okay but you've still got to acknowledge that like that is not an ideal situation to start you to start a marriage in but you just have to be able to say that well it's like i mean you can get married to the guy without the life plan who has a hundred thousand dollars worth of student loan debt and like can we all acknowledge that hey he may be the most godly man in the world or something like that but then like that's not the ideal situation to start you know significant life change there are entailments to this right sure like and i think it's perfectly fine to acknowledge that there i mean that's the thing that everyone just has to be reasonable there's obviously entailments to to what we're talking about so the choices that you make like like just because you become a christian that doesn't mean that all the choices that you make no longer have consequences so what you you know what you so you're going to reap like that's the point and so you can sew a bunch of different things if you sew to the flesh you're going to reap to the flesh corruption and if you've like if you've slept around with a bunch of men and you have like you know kids from three different dudes or whatever else and you're a single mother you've sewn to the flesh a a lot of this corruption that you're going to reap and then if you bring someone else into this equation you're asking them to reap this with you okay in a way that they didn't have to so i mean there's obviously like that's just like the thing you know so then if you can just be a little bit realistic about what's actually happening like when you have a single mother like they're there's and a lot of guys aren't they don't think about these things but i mean what was was often happens is you have a lady who is like who's trying who's providing for her no one's providing for her so what does that mean she has like kids who she has you know have all of you know most of like the reason why she's in the mess she's in is because she has a bunch of scoundrels for friends right so she doesn't have good relationships she doesn't have good friends she's often not involved in church and then she's in this scenario that she's in like she's not involved in church because she wasn't involved in church to begin with when she was getting into the mess that she was getting into right so now all of her relationships are all these pagans and now she has to figure out how to put food on the table while having a kid and the only way to do that is to pass this kid around to a bunch of disreputable people right and then day or best case scenario daycare right but then often ladies who are in the situation they're not even able to afford daycares right so like meaning like they don't have money they didn't have a plan they didn't have a life plan that they had set up that involves them like trying to figure out how to provide for a kid right they were they had probably a life plan they didn't even they probably just got pregnant like some girl who gets pregnant when she's 16 or 17 or whatever else she doesn't have any plan to provide for anyone there's no kind of job that she's going to get you know so then at that point her kids are being passed around by all these people in order to take care of her while she's working and they're being raised by a bunch of pagans and so then you think as a guy you're going to come in there you're going to take that on and then you're going to say hey yeah they're going to be my kid now or whatever else it's like but this this like this eight -year -old kid has been discipled by a bunch of junk for a long time you know and that's now like and then they have like other people in the mix like you know the former dad you know who had like now you have to trade you know and hand them off to them for the weekend you know randomly and you know and then you can have all these financial situations where you're getting sued and you know you've you're like trying to hold on to the kid and they're being torn between two different people and and then you have all the in -law situations and you have all the family situations and and so i mean it's obviously like that's just dealing with the kid element of it right yeah yeah but then i mean like the issue is it's like you know people who get divorced they often get divorced over and over and over again that's the way it works like and so you know people like everyone is like the issue is like literally everyone who gets divorced they're going to say it was the other person like that's what literally everyone says when they go into counseling it's not my fault it's the other person i can't see anything that i'm doing wrong it's all them so i'm like you know literally you know i'm the you know the mother theresa right i'm a saint right whatever yeah whatever that means but you know and then this guy is like literally adolf hitler you know and that's what like that's what they're going to say every single time but then if you have any kind of understanding about how human nature actually works then you'll realize that you know it takes two to tango and there's like look it it is what it is man like you know people like if you were such a great wife why did you have all the problems you had right and if you were such a great husband like if you were just so wonderful like you know wouldn't that at least go a long way you know towards this thing and so i mean and i think like the issue is like what ends up what happens is like people you got two people who are totally utterly blind to their own problems and then they have significant problems and you put them in a relationship and this guy and and all that you get is you get two people utterly blind to their own problems in a relationship together who have no capacity to show grace and mercy to each other who then are magnifying like the significant problems on the other side and totally blind to the problems they have in the end like the end result is like they didn't learn any lessons from it and they just run through the cycle over and over again so i mean that's why like you know ladies who are in this situation from the very beginning they often go through two or three husbands four husbands with four different kids because they never fixed the thing that was wrong with them in the beginning right yeah and you can just see it playing out in families to where this is like the dynamic to where it's just like you know grandmother has four divorces you know all the daughters have three or four divorces and that's the way it works that's the way life works you know and it's just like well that's because there were problems there that existed and then you know every new guy comes along thinks hey yeah it was the other dude you know she's pretty you know she's pretty she you know she sold me a good story right it was all this guy and then you know six months in you know three months in whatever they start realizing oh man you know that's what it was yeah right so i mean like in the same thing happens with guys you know so i mean the issue is it's just like this is um these are just realities that people have to be honest about like in there and particularly when you live in the like in a society full of nominal christians when you're living in a society full of nominal christians where everyone says they're a christian then you know okay she you know she's pretty she's you know she's used the abuse word she was abused you know whatever else emotionally in all that ways whatever so then your heart goes out and then you could be like the savior that comes along and fixes the whole thing right because men are oriented to want to like fix fix it right like i'm gonna fix it i'm gonna i'm gonna come along it'll be different because you know i can make it better or whatever and i can i you know i can there's like a god complex kind of thing there that's happening too you know but then it's like hey you know like look just being honest about the nature of what we're even talking about that at the very least the yes this should be a red flag you know this should be something that says like uh how did this happen right uh with extra levels of scrutiny that you obviously wouldn't show someone with very different outcomes right yeah so so i mean like if you're considering marrying someone from an intact family right intact family no history of promiscuity none of that right like that's obviously those are there you have a lot of encouraging signs there right yeah over and it's like like their life looks like a train wreck right now and the lives of all their family members look like a train wreck right yeah but you know it wasn't their fault they just were the helpless victim of circumstances and all that it's like well i don't know maybe there's more to this than what i am being told at the very beginning you know so do you think there's what what in your you know we've been talking about this saying hey the the person you know the woman who she has the kid you know maybe she's divorced or maybe she just lost her husband whatever in your mind that's a red flag meaning it's something that needs to be looked into it's not an inherent disqualifier yet but there's a very good chance that it you know once you've investigated further you realize it is what are the exceptions to that in your mind so give it give us an example of what would be like a hey you hear about this at first it's a red flag you look into it more it turns out it's not as bad as what it initially sounded like what would be an example of that in your mind yeah i mean i think um i mean obviously the more of more red flags you pile on to a situation the more concerned you should be sure you get what i'm saying so like i mean i just painted like if if if this is like like either girl that you're considering like this is like you're you're man number three right uh -huh yeah you're man number three and there's two kids from two other people and then all of her family looks like that too you know at a certain point it's just like well i think yeah you could be naive about what you're getting yourself into or you could understand that okay i understand what i'm looking at here right yeah like this wasn't an isolated incident yeah i mean i think there's obviously like you know the girl who is gets raped kind of like the extremely rare girl who gets raped you know who carries the baby due to no fault of her own kind of thing you know that yeah i mean obviously that's a different scenario right yeah that's a different kind of scenario than the scenario that we're talking about that doesn't mean that there won't be entailments to that too right sure and yeah there's a certain kind of person who is unwilling to hear hear that there are entailments to that also but i mean obviously like that's a different situation the kind of situation we're talking about i think like in general like if what you what often happens is like if in these kind of scenarios is there's a type of girl who will go through a bunch of stuff and then get remarkably converted and turn to christ and be a totally new person but then what often happens is you have ladies in these kind of situations who they're they don't darken the doors of a church then they're at some crisis point where they need a bunch of help then they get involved in a church right at that point because they have like a extra source of babysitters and resources and people are going to think the best of them and not judge them and everything else you know so i mean i i think but then you don't necessarily like all you're looking at is hey maybe they're faithfully attending now for now right yeah until they can fix their situation in which case you know who knows but so i mean there's that kind of person but i think if you were to see like a long track record of like i was a pagan you know this all happened i turned to jesus and there's like a substantial number of in between years of faithfulness that you could look at to say that they've learned from this and they're different you know i mean that's that's a different kind of situation but i mean i think in general like what i mean in an ideal world you have you know people without baggage on both sides you know so what often happens is you have guys who are just so filled with guilt and shame from their own fornication that they're thinking no good girl would ever want to you know godly woman was ever going to marry them and so they look at a situation like this and they're like hey yeah well i would like to show someone the kind of grace that i would like to be shown to me right and then often what happens even though in those kind of scenarios is you end up like in a scenario where the guy is like hey um i was trying to show grace but i didn't realize how much baggage that is being showed here right yeah like how much baggage i'm i'm in how much is of like all this stuff that other people did to this person is being taken out on you know me who's trying to show grace right yeah that kind of thing so i mean i think in the best case scenario you have a lot of you have you have a person who is like has a long track record of being faithful post all this that godly people can look around and observe and test you know it's not just like a train wreck from start to finish you know yeah where you're just having to overlook a red flag after red flag after red flag after red flag you know but then i mean obviously it's just like once you get trapped in this kind of thing you know there's often just it's hard you know yeah yeah you definitely want to be careful if you're considering entering into that kind of situation like as a lady like when you're a lady who is just kind of being you know like what what what often happens is like once like the reason why it repeats is because like you're in part you know like they they're attracted to the same kind of dude right oh yeah yeah and then and then the kind of person who is going to give them more compassion and grace and whatever else or you know guys who have their like significant own issues too right who are just looking for someone like just looking for a warm body or whatever right kind of thing you know so then you end up like a lady who is not prepared to do all the parenting and providing and everything on her own who's being passed from worthless dude to worthless dude because they're the only ones who are going to give her a time of day kind of thing right and then it's just a nightmare so so yeah i mean i think obviously like that god is forgiving god that you know there's no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus um if the lord account inequities none of us could stand all those things are true and like there's hard situations that people can find themselves in but then you know there is like the reality that people should obviously i mean this is these are if everyone like looked at the thing is if everyone were to look at what's on the other side of sexual sin and see like where it ends up and would flee from it with everything that they have that doesn't have to be them you know you get what i'm saying yeah like i mean that doesn't like 99 like 99 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you know times out of 100 that's not even like these are like what we're talking about is people who've willingly chosen this path that's contrary to god's plan and they're reaping all the bitter consequences of it and so there has to be some way for people you know to look at man on the outside and say hey maybe we should just all do what god says you know maybe maybe this is this is all what you expect to happen when we all just say no we don't want god to be king over us and like it's just going to be a bunch of pain and suffering and you know mess you know and so god god's just going to let us go through it because like until we wake up and like that's so the way of the transgressor is hard if you want to be spared all the hard that comes from that then there's a clear way and and so you know i think at the end of the day like the real repentant person the real repentant person isn't going to be the person who's saying hey i deserve consequence -free life you know the real repentant person is just going to say hey i don't deserve anything you know so um if someone wants to have mercy on me and then i don't deserve it and i'll be grateful to that right but then what's often happening in these kind of situations is you have people who feel like they deserve mercy and when you just we feel like you deserve it that's like you're the worst person to show it to you get what i mean like i mean i'm not saying that i'm saying like um um let me see if i can word that in a way that doesn't trigger necessarily people what i mean is like i would like showing a person like when you show like there's nothing worse than showing a person mercy who feels like you owe that to them you know it's like you better defeats the whole point of mercy right yeah it's like hey i want to show i want to show mercy if this is going to be received with gratitude i mean if we're sons of our father in heaven like we're obviously going to show mercy regardless but yeah obviously it's a lot better to show mercy to people who are not demanding it you know from you yeah who like take it and they receive it humbly you know so not like with a entitlement behind it so yeah sure okay fair enough well i think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on so thanks for you know thanks for giving those responses tim um you know like we say every week we certainly appreciate all you guys who support us week in and week out who listen to the episodes who are interacting with us online and if you want to help support us you can do that a few different ways the first would be if you're watching on youtube if you're watching on rumble leave a like leave a comment subscribe to the channel and if you're listening on the podcast you can subscribe to the podcast give us a five -star review all those things are totally free to y 'all they just take a few seconds to do but they're incredibly helpful for us and getting us out to a larger audience if you want to support us financially you can do that through our patreon there's a link down in the description and if you want to follow us on our other social media accounts twitter facebook all those good things there's links to those in the description as well we appreciate you guys and we'll see you on the next one this has been another episode of bible bashed we hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion we thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to bible bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media please reach out to us with your questions pushback and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at bible bashed podcast at gmail .com